Well, another meeting has come and gone

Well, another meeting has come and gone and if you were here you know it was very cool having Bill Robinson speak for us. It was a very busy week for me, I've had to spend extra time at work testing which left me with about an hour a day at home between coming home from work and heading out for the meeting each night. I sound like I am complaining but not really. My wife is out of town and I miss her a lot; so being busy made it easier for me.

Which says more than a few words about our service to God. When we have troubles, if we just focus on doing the right things, keeping ourselves busy in working for Christ, the time goes by fast. Once in a while in my life I get into a position where I have more to do than I have time for. If I just do what's right, it always seems to work out. Surely that's better than being a quitter, throwing up my hands and doing nothing at all.

But now the meeting is over, it's too late to invite our friends and family if we hadn't. I had to laugh a bit, though, at something that was staring us in the face all week. Those 10 flowers that Jan brought to brighten up the podium. What obvious bulletin fodder!

I know there were ten, because I counted them. The first day, they were all standing upright and proper, just like all of us. Everyone was there who could be there. We had almost a standing room only crowd. But then Monday night came, and a couple of those flowers started to droop. I know they didn't just shrivel up and die, but you could tell that they were going to be the ones that weren't going to make it. Unfortunately, our own attendance was way, way down too.

On Tuesday night some of those flowers were still struggling, and on Wednesday many were very, very noticeably failing over sideways. Again, this was a sad reflection of some of our members, who had stopped coming. Indeed, this is a sad reflection of some of our past members, who have fallen away from God and no longer attend. It looked very bleak indeed for them.

But Thursday night, something wonderful happened. Someone went up there and carefully rearranged those flowers around. The ones that were standing tall and strong throughout this whole week were arranged such that they supported the ones that were drooping. There were some that were weaker, but it was no longer obvious which ones they were, not when they were all standing up straight together.

When Friday came, something even more wonderful happened. Many of the members who had stopped coming throughout the week came back. They were there with the rest of us who had come through the whole week. If you were visiting, you would never know if one brother was weaker or stronger than the next. For that last night of the meeting, we were ALL strong and vibrant and shoulder to shoulder in attendance.

The flowers, well, by Friday they weren't doing so good. Or were they? They were finally all starting to shrivel up, after all they had no roots and were a week old. But they had the pleasure of something only some of us enjoyed. Those flowers had a ringside seat to some seriously good preaching all week long! They had served their purpose too. They held their own, cut off from nourishment, able to rely only on each other, and survived. Since we can never be cut off from God by anyone other than ourselves, and since we also can rely on each other, we should also be able to hold our own. But we must stay together, for the purpose God intends for us. Else like a flower alone we will shrivel up and die before our time. Can't we do better than a bunch of flowers?

Randy